Today is an incredibly sad day for fans of comic books, concept art, and downright anything science fiction. Artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud, who provided some of the most stunning scifi and fantasy art ever to grace a page, has succumbed to illness at the age of 73.

It's pretty hard to overstate the hand Moebius had in some of science fiction's most phantasmagoric cinema. You know his work even if you've never realized it.

One of the great science fiction films never made is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune. In 1975, the…
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Jodorowsky was a frequent comic collaborator with Moebius. Together they worked on the must-read, gloriously nutbar space opera The Incal (which was chock full of evil space eggs and virtuous giant jellyfish) and the screwball divine pregnancy tale The Madwoman of the Sacred Heart.

"They said that I changed their life," Giraud whispered in amazement. "‘You changed my life.' ‘Your work is why I became an artist.' Oh, it makes me happy. But you know at same time I have an internal broom to clean it all up. It can be dangerous to believe it. Someone wrote, ‘Moebius is a legendary artist.' I put a frame around me. A legend - now I am like a unicorn."

Behold the master at work in 2009. Between Giraud today and Ralph McQuarrie last week, the world of science fiction design has lost two of its greatest visionaries. Here's a sampling of Moebius' concept and comic art. That series of Willow illustrations will blow your damn mind. Stupid Daikini, it is not.